While no longer quite as enigmatic as Stalin’s Soviet Union, today’s Russia has a rather curious political system. Most peculiar is its presidential election, which has all the psychodrama of reality TV. Will Dmitry Medvedev run for reelection as Russia’s president? Will his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, seek to return to the top job? How will they continue to work together once each makes his intentions clear one way or the other? Mr. Putin, known for off-the-cuff comments that have ranged from the barbed and sarcastic to the graphic, can produce very entertaining television.
Russia’s presidential campaign and its aftermath will also test the Obama administration’s management of a relationship it has claimed as one of its great successes even as Mr. Obama seeks his own reelection. The best course for the United States—and one that would also be wise for more than a few aspiring reality TV stars—is to stay off the screen.
The source of Russia’s bizarre presidential campaign is the country’s so-called “tandem,” the power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin, which is particularly obscure because of its apparently informal nature. Because of this arrangement, and Mr. Putin’s presumed dominance, neither of the two men has formally announced his candidacy with only seven months to go before the election in March 2012.
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